they didn't even speed —

Cannonballing coast-to-coast in a Tesla 90D: Alex Roy sets a new record

Autopilot did most of the driving, covering 2,877 miles in 55 hours.

Enlarge/ Burt Reynolds as JJ McLure, and Dom DeLuise as Victor Prinzim in The Cannonball Run. Alex Roy is neither of these two characters. But it did give our office a chance to reminisce over how much we all loved the movie.

It must be the season for electric vehicles and speed records. Jonny Smith turned a long-forgotten 1970s electric city car into the world's fastest street-legal EV. Venturi and The Ohio State University just set a new EV land speed record. And to that list we can now add Alex Roy, Warren Ahner, and Franz Aliquo's cross-country "Cannonball Run," the trio having set a new fastest time for a coast-to-coast dash in a Tesla Model S 90D.

An affable chap prone to automotive adventures, Roy first came to notoriety in petrol-fueled Cannonball and Gumball rallies. These days, as editor-at-large for The Drive, he's a big proponent of both electrification and autonomous driving, particularly when the two meet as they do under the shapely metal-and-plastic form of a Tesla.

On August 24, Roy, Ahner, and Aliquo settled into the cabin of one such machine—a 90D, note, rather than the ludicrously fast P90D model—in Redondo Beach. Just 55 hours later the trio pulled into the Red Bull Garage in New York City having covered 2,877 miles (4,630km), besting the previous fastest transcontinental EV crossing by two hours and 48 minutes.

What's more, almost the entire journey was driven by autopilot; just 2.3 percent of the route was under manual control. The feat is even more impressive when you consider that an EV—yes, even a Tesla—takes much longer to recharge than an internal combustion-engined vehicle takes to refuel. In fact, the 90D spent a total of 13 hours and 46 minutes plugged into Superchargers along the route.

We caught up with Roy yesterday to find out a little bit more about the run. Contrary to expectations, the trip wasn't a license-threatening display of recklessness. Speed management was key, he told Ars. "The speed limits varied on the route between 65mph (104km/h) and 80mph (129km/h) in some places, and the power depletion of the car is crazy over 70mph (113km/h)," Roy said. "And remember, over 90mph (145km/h) autopilot disengages and the car becomes incredibly inefficient. There was nothing to be gained by going much faster."

Battery management was also constantly on their minds. "Remember, the 90D is not the top-of-the-line performance model, so battery temperature management is not as good as a P90D with Ludicrous mode," Roy told us. "And running the battery too hot also would mean longer charge times." Indeed, battery temperature management was also an issue for the Tesla we saw compete in this year's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

The trio didn't even use hypermiling tricks like drafting semis, since autopilot, even at its most aggressive setting, will always leave about a car-and-a-half's distance between it and the next vehicle on the road.

Not that it was all plain sailing. By the end of the run, the cabin of the 90D "was awful afterwards. When you're using the Tesla in range mode, temperature management in the car is tough," Roy told us, and it would have been worse had they not thought to buy some reflective sunshades to block the sun out of the panoramic roof. With every spare watt in the car's battery pack needed for range, that meant using climate control sparingly—no mean feat during what's almost certain to be the hottest month ever on record.

Not content with having set this time in a Tesla, Roy told us he plans to try similar trips in other electric vehicles, something which may prove tougher given the paucity of DC fast chargers that aren't Tesla Superchargers in the middle of the country. With any luck, we may even join him for such an attempt...